June 3, 2009

Marx defined the ruling class as those who control the means of production. But that seems so 19th Century. Today, the key is to control the terms of discourse.

For example, consider how affirmative action largely disappeared as something disussable in polite society in recent years. John McCain had a chance to take it up as an issue in 2008 but decided not to touch it. How'd that work out for him?

Today, people are talking about affirmative action again because Obama blundered by appointing a judge who had voted against Frank Ricci.

And yet, consider how the discourse remains structured even among Sotomayor's critics: as a moral issue of fair play. Hey, it's 2009: why not talk also about it as an economic issue? Can we continue to afford racial/ethnic preferences? Will we be able to continue to afford them in the future as the country adds 97 million Hispanics from 2000 to 2050?

122 comments:

Sgt. Joe Friday
said...

Nope. Sec. Geithner's dopy remarks the other day aren't the only reason the Chicoms are laughing at us. They see what we're doing and can't believe that we're actually doing it to ourselves...on purpose! They know that a USA that is 50% or more non-white, with the sort of internal squabbling that goes on when you have ethnic factions all fighting for their share of the spoils, is not going to be in any shape financially or militarily to stand up to them.

Speaking of AA as both a moral issue and an economic one makes the most sense.

Unfortunately, what's needed is the right messenger, but Reagan is gone. I find that blue collar guys nodd their heads enthusiastically at the words of guys like Gengrich and Limbaugh, but the so -called educated groups of males, while they seem to agree in principle with them, don't want to admit OUT LOUD that they share some of the same thoughts as those held dear by conservatives. It's just too uncool to be conservative, in their estimation.

Heck, these same males don't really hold dear the policies of Obama--they simply like his packaging, his style. Like the metro-sexual, that's all they seem interested in--style. They are political metro-sexuals!

Women are similar. They don't disagree with the views of a Gingrich or Limbaugh on the matter of AA--they simply want a different messenger, one whom they don't feel is a blusterer, know what I mean?

The success of defeating policies or accepting policies always seems to come back to style, style, style. That shouldn't surprise us.

Marx defined the ruling class as those who control the means of production. But that seems so 19th Century. Today, the key is to control the terms of discourse.

Western Marxists realized already in the early 20th century that to effect a revolution they would need to replace the commonsense "bourgeois" values and ideas prevalent is society with those of the Marxist intelligentsia. Gramschi, the Frankfurt School, and others all agreed on this. Ever since, "the long march through the institutions" has been astonishingly successful.

"Marx defined the ruling class as those who control the means of production. But that seems so 19th Century. Today, the key is to control the terms of discourse."

In terms of economics, it is the same case today. But I would use the catch-all phrase of those who control/own businesses with employees, be it in finance, media, etc. The owners of the mass media and their financial backers have the most power in America.

You are of course right when it comes to what can be said and what cannot be said; this is in turn tied in with money and who controls it.

Its true that what constitutes acceptable discourse in respectable society is moving ever leftward. People used to tell me that there would be a backlash against PC and that suppression of speech creates martyrs. All of that is wrong. Things like hate speech laws help to villify conservatives since laws are regarded as moral compasses by the masses. There was no backlash against PC because many conservatives had already half-absorbed leftist moral decrees. For example consider John Rhys-Davies saying that he is "opposed to Islamic extremism precisely because he feels that it violates Western beliefs in equality, democracy, tolerance, and the abolition of slavery." whilst denouncing preservation or Europe;s historical ethnic character as as morally permissable obective. Of course the battle against Islamification will be lost because those wonderful leftist idols are not in fact dear to most people. If Rhys davis were a real conservative he might have said something like "If it's wrong for England to wish to preserve its ethnic character then it's wrong for the Islamic countries that these people come from too, hence Islamic countries should dramatically change their immigration policies to conform with those of England" "What's right for you is right for me" is really the only universal moral argument and its powerful, but that's why leftists have proscribed it.

About the leftist idols, they (of themselves) aren't dear to anyone but that you prostrate yourself in front of them is a loyalty test. Anyone failing to do so is immediately branded a heretic. John Rhys Davis thusly passes his loyalty test and cravenly triangulates against those to the right in the same breath.

Malaysia currently has affirmative action for it's Malay majority, which is around 50% of the total population. This affirmative action is mainly at the expense of the Chinese minority, which makes up around 25% of the population.

Steve, I totally disagree with you about using the economic argument. Affirmative action is discrimination against people by race, ethnicity, and gender by the government, or mandates on private industry to do the same. It's just plain wrong, whether it pays off "economically" somehow or not!

I realize that you of all people do know it's wrong, and maybe you want to bring up the economic argument to convince more people to be against AA. However, what if some bright economist (haha, OK, there's no such thing, humor me) calculates via rectal analysis that AA pays off. Then, you're argument turns back around to bite you.

My criticism would be that WOMEN, particularly White Women, benefit greatly from Affirmative Action. And that's why Yuppie men (who must curry favor with women) "approve" of AA. And Obama, who is worshipped as a god by the media, and women.

Women have benefited from Obama's economy, and will do so even more. They get increased government employment, gay/female ghettos impervious to male presence (Advertising, Marketing, Corporate Finance, etc.) and best of all, excluding "beta" type White guys.

What makes AA a bigger issue now is that most employment is going to be Government directed, no place for hipster young(er) men to go look for say, a cool (non-AA) startup in some loft. Where attitude and performance count. Instead it's quotas, against them. What good is it holding women's opinion, if you can't put money in the bank.

Female approval is powerful, but only goes so far.

Around 52% according to Gallup, approve of Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. That's Obama's victory margin. Mostly due to women. Duh. Women BENEFIT from AA. Along with Illegal Immigration (cheap nannies make single motherhood or go-go careerism affordable). Meanwhile Salvadoran and Mexican women are not flooding into Advertising or Government Social work.

From National Review Online's Corner:"It might be the oddest political pairing of the year. Barack Obama, whose campaign for president carefully avoided race-based political appeals, is teaming up with the man who practically perfected them: the Rev. Al Sharpton.

This double-take moment came last month, with Sharpton holding court with reporters at the White House, fresh out of an Oval Office meeting with Obama in his role as co-founder of the bipartisan Education Equality Project.

So far, Sharpton has been to the White House more times, and for more close-up conversations with Obama, than the leaders of other long-established civil rights organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Urban League.

And in April, Vice President Joe Biden addressed the annual convention of Sharpton’s group, the National Action Network, in New York.

Now the Department of Education is making plans for Sharpton to join Secretary Arne Duncan on a five-city tour this fall — an idea that Duncan’s aides say came directly from the White House after the Oval Office meeting."

Aristocracy is incompatible with democracy. Yet quasi-democratic propaganda serves to pacify the masses. Today we suffer from our elites' schemes to simultaneously recruit the most impulsive and violent segment of the population as clients and retainers and to hamper would be social-climbers from the middle of the population.

The elites say to NAM's "all middle-class people are racists and their acts of oppression keep you poor and cause all of your woes. We few good people, we politicians and corporate executives, college professors and journalists-- we rescue and protect you NAM's from the racists who surround you. You must do as we say if we are to assist you."

Are our elites not clever? Only 40 years ago those same elites were known as "The Establishment" and were correctly recognized as America's oppressor class. Now they are "diversity leaders" and style themselves champions of the oppressed, guarding NAM's against marauding middle- class racists.

When some middle-class upstart like James Watson gives our elites the lie, they force him to grovel and recant; if that seems insufficient they sic clients like Al Sharpton and his mob on the upstart.

At the same time, our elites forcibly substitute their NAM clients for middle-class social climbers. "Get an education," elite propaganda says to the world, but if you aren't already destined by parentage or patronage for elite status, when by sheer grit and persistence you scramble up to grasp the bottom rung of the promotion or admission ladder, our elites will kick you off it (sometimes quite publically as with Ricci) then give your place to some NAM client.

Our elites know that those NAM clients will not bequeath elite positions to many of their children, cursed by regression to the mean. Admitting some statistical anomalies among the NAM's to "life peerages" creates the illusion that there is a way for ordinary folks to join the elite by work or talent, but in fact, the only way is by marriage-- and in practice very few girls get to play the role of princess in that fairy tale.

It's easy enough to understand why the likes of John McCain will not appeal to the interests of the middle class-- McCain doesn't want his family exiled from the elite. Even the Presidency is not worth such an ostracism.

I find it rather sad that I do not expect to see any champion of the middle class alter American society in my lifetime. I think our elites can co-opt or banish anyone who might serve middle-class interests.

However, it seems possible that some Hugo-Chavez type might shake up America. Our elites are arrogant as well as clever-- by recruiting NAM's as soldiers for the elites' class war, the elites are playing with dynamite. Some charismatic and sufficiently egotistical NAM demagogue might lead the NAM's against the elites. That would do the middle class little good-- NAM interests are not theirs, yet aiding the elites would earn only contempt and betrayal.

Of course "person of color" is just the sort of orwellian euphemism that is imposed on us by the discourse dictators. Why not shape it to our purposes?

In the spirit of "NAM" we can distinguish several classes of POC. Call them LPOCs, BPOCs, APOCs, and JPOCs. Guess which POC organized and led the rest of them on the long march through the non-person-of-color institutions?

For some reason I suspect the terms of this coded discourse are still going to end up controlled.

When people won't acknowledge that affirmative action hires tend to be less competent than the alternative employee, discussing it as an economic issue is a complete non-starter. You can't argue that the economic costs aren't worth it if the other person is convinced that it's impossible that there are any economic costs.

Can we at least agree that Obama didnt commit an error of judgment by nominating Sotomayor? To a liberal, she's the perfect choice. Calling her a blunder would be like calling it a blunder everytime Bush did something good for conservatives.

Sailer you ask funny questions for a guy who's living in one of the ground zero areas in the War Against the West. It's only 2009 and Raspail's Camp of the Saints is in your face right now.

By 2050 the majority non-white, Spanish-speaking USA will have a BBB credit rating in an absolute best case scenario. Or perhaps credit may even be non-existent in the country by then: basketcase economics. Worst case scenario is that the country is literally carved up by foreign powers.

Afford? AFFORD? Once the baby boomers die off (in abject poverty) and stop voting which will happen circa 2030 this country will become a dead zone of inexorable non-white non-Western decline.

The 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act was the stake in the heart of the free world and the people who lobbied for it knew exactly what they were doing. The grim future belongs to the Nation Wreckers.

I'm curious if you know of any peer-reviewed studies that quantify the economic cost of affirmative action? I just read a Paul Krugman book in which he wrote that the big mystery of the past few decades is the decline in productivity of the American economy. He listed a few possible explanations--stuff like the entry of the lazy hippie generation into the workplace--but there was nothing about affirmative action.I really hope you write more about this.

Sailer I found the Denninger website through your site. I assume you read Denninger.

A) We have begun a 10 year depression. Our enormous debt overhang can either be defaulted or inflated away. Either way it's looking like a 10 year recovery plan or something worse.

B) That means we MIGHT regain sustainable economic growth trends in the late teens or by 2020.

C) By the 2020's the Baby Boomers (1946-1964) will be either retired, dead, or ill/disabled/elderly and imposing a huge net cost on the American economy. The meat of the baby boom was really births circa 1948-1958 with huge numbers right at the half-century mark.

D) 18-under America is already nearly 50% non-white today and by 2020's will be 2/3s non-white. The demographic shift to non-white will be in dramatic evidence in the working age population by the 2020's.

This is a recipe for a future America that is a highly dysfunctional society along the lines of today's India. Except the India of today is supported in many ways by the Western World i.e. United States and Europe plus Canada and Australia (also Hong Kong and Japan) as the bulwark against a new global dark ages.

If we're lucky we'll get one more significant economic expansion period in the USA as a blow off top that precedes the Roman style collapse of the America Empire. Or we might just head down into the foreign war-civil war-domestic chaos abyss from here.

It seems likely that if we do get another economic burst in the USA it will be highly speculative and unsustainable considering the incredible stress the retiring baby boomers will be putting on the social safety net. Because it's not just the matter of transfer payments to the retirees but the huge economic dynamism of that generation that will need to be replaced by a giant group of working age Latinos with much less education per capita.

Read Martin Armstrong's mega cycle stuff which can be found often linked at Denninger's site or linked also at this econ site by Nate:

The Ricci case, and affirmative action generally, contrasts the different styles in judicial thinking better than just about any other modern issue. Conservative judges (Clarence Thomas, John Roberts etc.) believe the way to stop ending racial discrimination is to stop discriminating based on race. A strict interpretation of the Constitution, particularly the 14th Amendment, does not allow for affirmative action/racial discrimination of any kind.Yet there is another school of thought to which many legal scholars and judges subscribe.

Liberal interpretations of the Constitution contend that a “morality” exists in the within the text. This idea is espoused by Justices like Ruther Bader Ginsberg and Thurgood Marshall. Legal scholars like Ronald Dworkin have conditioned an entire generation of young lawyers to adhere to this dangerous ideology. By using the hidden morality argument these judges can basically substitute their will for the law; Alexander Hamilton warned about the dangers of such actions in Federalist 78. This line of thought breeds policies like affirmative action.

BTW, guess which school of thought Justice to be Sotomayor adheres to?

AA simply means that white men are going to be working disproportionately in business (rather than govt or academia), where AA doesn't really matter. Is that such a bad thing? I wouldn't be surprised if AA were ultimately blamed for blacks not accumulating capital . . . can't accumulate capital when you work for the govt. AA is really a nefarious plot to keep minorities poor and employed by the man . . .

OK, you want economic, you got economic: What will the Ricci decision do to property values in New Haven?

After all, the city will end up with either of two noticeably different levels of fire protection.

Which brings up the question, does Yale University have its own separate firefighting department? If so, does it also fall under Ricci's shadow? Which department protects faculty homes? (Let me guess-- they're in the suburbs, assuming New Haven has any? Or do they all commute from distant farmhouses?)

I have another example I think you should blog about, because it relates to IQ and biology, and it relates to a connection people haven't made.

Maternal age and autism. We've had this huge autism epidemic. There's research (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/559935 --this is an observational study involving hundreds of thousands of kids) indicating maternal age may have some link to it. But given the public hysteria about this, it hasn't been publicized at all. Why not? Because it might convince women to make the politically incorrect choice of early marriage and childbearing.

You could potentially save a lot of women a lot of heartbreak and increase affordable family formation by blogging on this, since we all know topics you blog on have a tendency to mysteriously appear in the media a few weeks later.

I believe that king obama will prove right, and AA will not be removed, regardless of circumstance.

However...

I am also mindful that all dictatorships look unassailable until the day after they crumble, at which point everyone agrees that the downfall was inevitable - we are flexible in our thinking that way. When AA falls, it will go all at once. There may be a few preparatory nibbles at the edges, but there will not be a gradual change as we eventually grow out of the need. Readers here know that this is not a problem that can be grown out of.

The value conflict is unsustainable in the long run. Equal outcome is not the natural result of equal opportunity, as today's mythmakers would have it (just a bit more, and we'll be over the top, Jack). It is in fact a contradiction.

Yet a mutually good outcome for the different races is not a contradiction, and not impossible. But AA will prevent that outcome, not encourage it.

The game for some time has been Control of the Means of Production of Public Opinion. And the Marxists/Neocons have total control over the Means of Production of Public Opinion.

Note also that Public Opinion is different from Public Sentiment. I'd say that the difference between the two is that Public Opinion is what most people think they are allowed to say in public versus Public Sentiment which is what many people actually think but most are afraid to say. Of course for many people, if some idea or concept or "fact" isn't poured into them by the Priests of the Media Elite, they simply don't believe that it is legitimate.

Hey Steve, as someone who has recently discovered your work, I had an epiphany this morning on the way to work, realizing both why what you say (about race, etc.) is basically right, but also why it is taboo to say such things. I grew up in a liberal family in a liberal college town and had a very liberal education, and I am still basically a liberal (voted for Obama and I still support him). But as an adult I became a skeptic and critical thinker, and I have reexamined some of my indoctrination, both religious and cultural, from an objective viewpoint.

Like you, I am a firm believer in Occam's razor. The easy part was a critical examination of religion: the claims of biblical literalists do not pass the smirk test. You may as well try to tell me that Jack and the Beanstalk is a true story as Jonah and the Whale. Or resurrection, virgin birth, etc. There is no compelling evidence that prayer works, or that there is an afterlife. Unfortunate accidents are as likely to happen to good people as to bad people. Alleged miracles do not stand up to critical scrutiny. But of course, to say these things to the true believers is taboo. So I don't discuss religion much with the religious or try to disabuse them of their delusion.

Applying critical thinking to the politically correct orthodoxy on race leads me to a similar conclusion. From an objective viewpoint I cannot deny that Occam's razor supports your POV rather than the politically correct orthodoxy. But again, it is taboo to say this for similar reasons. People perceive it as an attack, or as crypto-bigotry, even if you scrupulously stick to objective facts.

But it's clear to me that the problems of today in countries like Haiti or countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have nothing to do with European Colonialism or legacies of slavery. Of course, slavery was a terrible evil, which I would never condone, but it was ubiquitous in the ancient world and was certainly not limited to that perpetrated by Europeans. I actually would not have a problem with some form of one-time reparations, but in the long run I think we should have a race-neutral society where people are judged as individuals and we don't try to pretend that inequality of outcomes is necessarily due to bigotry, "institutional racism" or other such intellectual contraptions created to explain away the sometimes-uncomfortable fact of diversity (in more than just a superficial skin-deep sense) among races.

You know, I used to think the post-modernist stuff was sheer crap. And then I got to reading Habermas and Foucault, and by Jove if they aren't right about a whole lot of stuff. And even their best critics, for example Uberto Eco, are versed in the language. These guys were smart, their work has yielded a lot of insights, and Steve seems to be discovering this. No doubt their politics are completely different than most readers of Sailer, but man, does reading them make a whole lot of stuff make sense.

Somewhat OT, NRO is reporting that in her senior Thesis, Sotomayor could not even say US Supreme Court, with her support for Puerto Rican nationalism, she called it the "North American Supreme Court."

Is it fair to ask if a woman who while at College could not even utter the word "America" not be put on the US Supreme Court?

The answer is of course, no. Since a sizeable amount of the population would agree with her. The View's Joy Behar (a lapsed Catholic) noted today that Baptism is like Waterboarding, and both are "barbaric."

This is an interesting issue. AA was much talked about by conservatives well into the 90's, but then disappeared from the political radar screen. It seems to me that it was the total takeover of the conservative media and foundations by the neocons that caused this. The people who cared about stuff like AA were purged from the movement and replaced by people like David Frum and Jonah Goldberg.

From my experience debating AA, the argument will eventually reduce to accusations of personal racism or accusations of societal racism.

The former can be viewed as recently as the Tyler Cowen post about HBD and Sailer. The latter is almost always an unfalsifiable claim that most whites are scared to dispute because then they'll be accused of personal racism. Liberals always talk about "subtle, silent" racism or "institutional racism". They get away with it because they're so vague that it's difficult to directly counter.

Basically they've framed the debate as: them - the caring, considerate, defenders of the oppressed versus us - the insular, racist, selfish beneficiaries of "white privilege" (WhateverTF that means).

"Affirmative action is discrimination against people by race, ethnicity, and gender by the government, or mandates on private industry to do the same."

Yeah, so?

It's just plain wrong, whether it pays off "economically" somehow or not!

Dude, there is no blanket "wrong" in the world. How many decades will it take you mild conservatives to understand this? There is a racial struggle for resources, with some races stronger than others at certain times. Some grasp this intuitively, others are part of racial groups that inculcate this awareness in their members, others never grasp it.

Correspondingly, just like there is no "wrong" for everyone, there is no "right". South Africa's apartheid policies were every bit as valid as those put in place in the United States. A magical shift in our domestic policy, away from a racially biased favoritism toward one of merit based on the ability to think in the abstract as measured by higher I.Q. scores would leave certain types behind in the bid for survival. Why would they want that? That would be "wrong" for them.

"I say, better to hammer on the main point: Wrong is wrong."

The gazelle would think it wrong that the lion eats him. He wants to survive. The lion would think it wrong that the gazelle doesn't want to let him eat him. He wants to survive as well.

Forget the civilizational artifice erected all about you. As Goethe advised, learn the laws of nature, and follow them.

I'd also like to see some good references for studies on the costs and direct implications of affirmative action programs. (It's important to clarify that we're concerned with the de facto quotas and lower hiring/promotion/admissions standards, not the older sense of making an honest effort to see that minorities get a chance to apply for the job or school or whatever.) These need to be things that can be stated in simple declarative sentences, with clear implications, and links to solid studies with available data.

Steve posted some data on test score differences, which would make for some nice statements along these lines. (Should blacks be admitted to medical schools with MCAT scores at the 15%th percentile (or whatever) of whites?) Wasn't there also data on the rate of passing the bar, and the rate of malpractice cases? (Though for malpractice cases and other medical outcomes, you have a confounding variable in the mix of patients seen.)

AA's defenders pretty much have to retreat into either accusations of racism (or the softer version of "white privilege"), or they have to retreat into discussions of amorphous, subtle society-wide discrimination. They also need to keep the details of AA programs somewhat foggy. Because a bald statement of the facts is lethal for their argument. Get up and argue that "we need to give black students from the ghetto a hand up, not a hand out," and you sound pretty good. Argue that "we need to let black students into the UC system who could not get in as white students, and it's okay that they then flunk out or drop into relatively easy majors with little future (sociology, black studies) as a result," and you don't sound nearly so good.

Those bald facts need to be stated. Solid, well-researched facts quoted from mainstream sources. Because AA defenders faced with those facts will feel the need to attack them, to claim that they're all lies.

"The elites say to NAM's 'all middle-class people are racists and their acts of oppression keep you poor and cause all of your woes. We few good people, we politicians and corporate executives, college professors and journalists-- we rescue and protect you NAM's from the racists who surround you. You must do as we say if we are to assist you.' "

I think this is what Ted Kennedy and his right-hand men have managed to do. They purport to be speaking to and working for the vast middle and working classes (who mostly believes that they are) when in reality they have been taking from the pockets of the working class to pay for the sloth of the non-working welfare recipients, the generations after generations of them who know Kennedy is really speaking for them.

Single out whites? What about recent immigrant whites? What about whites whose families never owned slaves?

And who receives these reparations payments? Surely a first-generation immigrant from Africa should not be receiving this money. A man like Obama, born from an american mother and an immigrant father, should surely be paying rather than receiving reparations.

Reparations is a completely absurd concept. How about we just give grant payments to blacks in the US so they have the same median income as modern-day africans? Oh, wait...

Blacks in america should thank their lucky stars that their ancestors were the lucky few who escaped the Dark Continent.

"AA simply means that white men are going to be working disproportionately in business (rather than govt or academia), where AA doesn't really matter. Is that such a bad thing?"

Yes. It's a very bad thing when you consider that government is growing larger and larger and will take an even greater percentage of our income for decreasing returns. Just look at education. Think AA in education has given you a return on your investment?

Simple little question from a simple little mind, but I am going to ask it anyway:

How do the libs like Ginsburg, Souter, and now Sotomayor (or for that matter any liberal pol) explain the success of Asian minorities who have come here, live several generations to a household, work all kinds of menial jobs to save enough money, pool it all together and open family businesses? The more ambitious Mexican families do the same--thus, the number of successful small Mexican restaurants.

With the sheer numbers of the extended black family in this country, how do pols explain the failure of blacks to do this? Oh yeah, I have heard that blacks couldn't get loans, but that's because they walked in with no money saved.

Even minimum wage jobs accord an opportunity to save enough money if the number of people contributing to the kitty is large enough.

No one can convincingly argue that Asians haven't faced discrimination in this country. Libs have just not been pressed on this issue because people are afraid to offer the comparison (the contrast actually) between the two groups.

I agree with demographic destiny. The low white birthrate creates a population vacuum that sucks in immigrants.

If whites had more children, say a total fertility rate of 2.5 children per woman average (instead of 1.8) , there would be enough votes to keep immigrants out and enough children to keep the economy growing.

There are no economic systems that grow GDP with a shrinking population.

Based on the number of children in the local homeschool group member directory, they have an average 3.0 kids per family. Overwhelmingly, white, protestant, and college educated parents. Orthodox Jews average about six kids per woman. Amish same. All these groups are relatively small but have grown considerably and the trend is continuing. The have strong group identity, and low crime rates.

I know some folks don't like that profile, but hey at least they aren't on welfare. They believe in themselves and their children and work.

At the rate liberals are going, these folks will eventually edge them out.

Reproductive freedom has served to create something of an artificial (vs. natural) selection process. Intelligent people have self selected themselves into shrinking and growing groups.

This is different from what has happened among the less intelligent due to reproductive freedom.

I actually would not have a problem with some form of one-time reparations

You should have a problem with it. Black Americans are 20+ times as wealthy as modern sub-Saharan Africans. You want to fine people with grandfathers from Poland for that? Not to mention, whites have been paying reparations on the sly via welfare for at least three generations now.

in the long run I think we should have a race-neutral society where people are judged as individuals and we don't try to pretend that inequality of outcomes is necessarily due to bigotry, "institutional racism" or other such intellectual contraptions created to explain away the sometimes-uncomfortable fact of diversity (in more than just a superficial skin-deep sense) among races.

They get away with it because they're so vague that it's difficult to directly counter.

Difficult for the wussypants. I say, when you're bluffed, raise the stakes.

I say, if leftists want to keep this "systemic, subtle racism" thing in their tool bag they're going to have to defend it. Make them explain why it doesn't mean whites should be locked away in a whites-only society to prevent harm to non-whites, and that whites aren't fit company for other races (and why it doesn't make allowing non-white immigration a mass hate crime). Make them explain how it doesn't make separatists right, if for divergent reasons. Make them explain how it isn't a halo of guilt and sin hanging over the heads of our unborn children. Make them explain how it isn't a presumption of guilt against an entire race (unto which generation, exactly), and a cynical, malevolent tool to be used against the Kulaks, er, I mean, white people. Make them explain how it isn't simply an unprovable excuse for the disproved assertion of group equality. Make them explain how the accusation is itself not racist, applying as it does only to whites.

Johnny Smoke sed:"By 2050 the majority non-white, Spanish-speaking USA will have a BBB credit rating in an absolute best case scenario. Or perhaps credit may even be non-existent in the country by then: basketcase economics. Worst case scenario is that the country is literally carved up by foreign powers."

You know Johnny,the thing is the new mulatto elite don't give a s. about the downgrading of the country, whether its AAA to BBB, clean water to sewage, infections, train derailings whatever. All that counts is being in charge, and screwing whitey. Zimbabwe (I hate having to type so many letters for such a rathole) and South Africa are being happily run into the ground by the new black "elite". The hungry, dying masses (Zim.) or the disintegrating infrastructure (both countries) don’t bother them in the least.

The economic issue I think has always been the much stronger of the two, because it is easier to twist the ethical issue logic into pretzels on TV, especially when you have multiple guests who will spend half the time talking past one another and the interviewers. Regarding what Dave Lincoln said: I disagree because academia has far more center-left and left-wing economists than center-right and right-wing economists and yet there is no strong theoretical or empirical papers from any known economist of any repute that strongly support the idea even forty years into it's existence, what does that tell you? Most economists on the left ignore it because it's a weak argument and because it might lead into unwanted policy conclusions. I think the the theoretical and factual case against AA is overwhelmingly strong, which is why PC is needed to constrict the discourse into PC acceptable channels, if it didn't, AA would utterly collapse in short order, at least intellectually, the political implosion would take longer of course.

Oh for the days when mothers only inflicted schizophrenia and homosexuality on their offspring; but then they found brain chemistry was the culprit and a whole genre of psychiatry and literature fizzled out.

Please SFG. Spare us the fullness of your bellyaching. We already know age is a risk. That's why most pregnant women past 35 get amniocentises, be they religious or not. If it can be identified, I guess autism will be added to the list of abortable offenses.

Reality check: would-be fathers need to be mindful of what they offer future generations, statistically speaking.

"Abraham Reichenberg at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, along with several others at research institutions in the United States and Israel, found a significant relationship between paternal age and autism, even after accounting for other factors, such as mothers' age and socioeconomic status.

Children of fathers who were 15 to 29 years of age had a risk of about six in 10,000 of developing autism. Children of fathers in their thirties had a risk of nine in 10,000. Children of fathers in their forties had a risk of 32 in 10,000, and children of fathers who were older than 50 had a risk of 52 in 10,000." Washington Post, September 6, 2006.

In the article, the reporter considers the number of cases studied to be quite large, in the tens of thousands.

Basically they've framed the debate as: them - the caring, considerate, defenders of the oppressed versus us

Yet they're not all that compassionate. They're vaunted compassion never extends to those whom they disagree with. IMO its another leftist self-misrepresentation much like their purported belief in evolution.

There is no problem to defeat affirmitive action in your country.Your ancesters left you the tools of elections and law to defend the rights of man and of citizens of your nation.This is a moral issue of great importance.This country did not come by inheritance from the trees.It was created intellectually and morally and physically by a particulat people. A British protestant people with the sole divisions of a northern Puritan/evangelical and a southern Anglican.then they separated from the mother country and have ever since exclusive moral rights to all things in America. its there creation, possession, inheritance, as a natural right.The british, southerner both tried to take it and were defeated by war.now others try by moral arguments and accusations.no problem.if the American man can't hold to what is his against ideas/accusations when his ancesters faced death/injury then he's not worth the inheritance.steve sailor is a strong man and many posters here. They are doing what they can to fight.fight and stop the segregated immigrant identities from claiming anything in your country as theirs because of identity.if this is a great movement, it is, then it calls for great reaction to destroy it with the moral, practical tools left by your fathers.

Say indeed Obama has no moral claim to be president because he ran and many voted for him because he was a different deserving identity.I predict the majority will agree with the true American patriots.you have better foundations then here in canada.

Get a grip you idiots. We are in a Global economy now. It wasn't affirmative action that put GM in bankruptcy - it was stubborn unions and granite-heads like Steve Sailor who put this country behind the 8-ball.

We should call institutional racism what it is: a conspiracy theory. The left's default assumption is huge numbers of individual hiring managers, college admissions committees, test administors, teachers, etc. are in on it. If it isn't everyone in power, the there must be an Illuminati of racism secretly maintaining institutional racism.

"Everyone's out to get me" is an extraodinary claim, and requires strong evidence.

Re: "Its true that what constitutes acceptable discourse in respectable society is moving ever leftward." by Anonymous....My question with this thinking has to do with how long this trend can continue. Wasn't the initial impetus the fantasy that the supra-national ideal embodied in the collectivist states was attainable and most definitely worth the struggle?Now that we see the collectivist states are national socialist in character why would the intelligentsia strive and who precisely would they make contact with? Che Guevara? Hugo Chavez? The Chinese are laughing at the socialist bumblers in this country and the Russians outright hate them. The academic leftists will give up the game sooner or later because there is no status in being a leftist anymore, unless of course you dig being idolized by South American tinhorns.

To judge from these comments, one factor counts for much more in connection with AA than either fairness or economics: the morale of the opposition.

Other than Assistant Village Idiot at about no. 25, everyone seems to have virtually given up. It's a done deal, hopeless. All that's left is to complain, better do it anonymously as well to be safe.

The feeling is understandable, but it's important to separate feelings from a very complex social and political reality. Trends do reverse. Game changers enter when least expected.

We shouldn't try to suppress our depression when we look at the wreckage the institutional Left has done to American society, but let's not urge one another to despair, either. Many battles that look to have been lost have ultimately been won.

Yes the terms of discourse are tightly controlled. But it is still possible to get knowledge of HBD out there - just takes a little more work

Here is an example - I spend my time mainly among very high IQ liberal Christian whites and whenever I bring up the fact that korean babies are born with a higher IQ than white christian babies, and that adoption stats prove this, overwhelmingly they agree with me. Many of them know white christians that have adopted korean babies (Korea seems to prefer boys to girls so Koreans put their girl babies up for adoption) It is well known that many of the Korean babies sent to the USA are from mothers who smoked and drank during the pregnancy. If you doubt this, contact any adoption agency that deals with Korean babies.

Basically, in Korea when a pregnant woman wants to put a baby up for adoption they ask her if she smoked drank or took drugs while pregnant. If the answer to all three is no, they generally place the baby with a Korean or Korean American family. If the answer is yes, then they place the baby with a white American family

By the way I don't criticize the Korean people or the Korean government for this in any way. It is their right.

Anyway, these babies that are adopted by whites in the USA have all sorts of disadvantages in terms of in utero treatment and still they wind up scoring better on tests than the actual biological children of the white American parents that adopt them.

Anyway, none of my liberal high IQ friends disputed the success of Korean babies raised in the USA. I don't think that very many white liberal people in the US disagree with talking about the genetically higher IQ of Koreans. So long as you make it clear with your body language that you won't ever bring up any of the groups that have lower IQ than US whites (taboo) they are happy to discuss the topic.

Bottom line, discussing low IQ groups is off limits but discussing the high genetic IQ of Koreans is not a taboo among any group I have ever encountered - and if people think long and hard for enough years about the genetically higher iq koreans are born with, the light bulb about HBD will eventually go on

Talking about affirmative action in the context of economics is like talking about the confederate flag in the context of "southern heritage." In both cases, you're making up new excuses (and muddying the waters) to disguise what might otherwise be deemed to be politically incorrect and indefensible positions. I don't know if there have been studies done, but I suspect that the true cost of affirmative action (on a national level) is pretty small. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the redistributive effects of affirmative action might be economically beneficial in the aggregate (because blacks and hispanics might be more likely to spend in areas that wouldn't otherwise receive as much spending). Anyway, I actually don't believe it should be politically incorrect to talk about race and IQ and how they may correlate. I admire the work that you do and have done in the field. To be honest, I was against it initially, but the evidence on your side has become overwhelming. But when I read through your comments section, I am always reminded of the hate, prejudice and vitriol that seem to underlie many attacks against affirmative action (as well as attacks against the wrong-headed notion of there not being racial distinctions, etc.), and I find it off-putting. For the anti-AA side to be taken seriously and to be revived, it needs something similar to a Nixon going to China.

"Harvard University will endow a visiting professorship in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies, a position that, it believes, will be the first endowed, named chair in the subject at an American college."

Mr.Steve Sailer,I am extremely enthusiastic about your blog which doesn't give a damn about sensitivity and preaches the straight truth.You may wish to check out my own blog posts.Admittedly,they're recent,but they focus on Debunking the leftist evangelist Elizabeth Spelke.http://arrogantprodigyscience.blogspot.com/2009/06/spelkeliar-for-misrepresentation.htmlhttp://arrogantprodigyscience.blogspot.com/2009/06/elizabeth-spelkes-pseudoscientific.htmlI would be obliged if you visit my humble blog.

Controlling the terms of discourse, is a very apt phrase. That is, of course, exactly what political correctness does. Probably 80% of white Americans would like to see the Mexican invasion stop, but because of political correctness we can't even say so without being branded as racists.

I think a start is limiting Affirmative Action to Native Americans and the descendants of American slaves. That would tighten up eligibility pretty dramatically.

A large percentage of blacks who receive AA help are immigrants or the children of immigrants. To give one example, the President of the United States.

Steve quoted a NY Times piece on this phenomenon a few years ago...“While about 8 percent, or about 530, of Harvard's undergraduates were black, Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., the chairman of Harvard's African and African-American studies department, pointed out that the majority of them — perhaps as many as two-thirds — were West Indian and African immigrants or their children, or to a lesser extent, children of biracial couples.http://vdare.com/sailer/harvard_quotas.htm

McCain's attitudes on affirmative action probably were greatly influenced by numerous military courses and briefings on race relations. He would have been ordered to implement affirmative action policies, with no objections allowed.

But when I read through your comments section, I am always reminded of the hate, prejudice and vitriol that seem to underlie many attacks against affirmative action (as well as attacks against the wrong-headed notion of there not being racial distinctions, etc.), and I find it off-putting. - Brown Ram

Maybe the hate and vitriol underlying the attacks on affirmative action is a reaction to the hate and vitriol that underlie the defense of affirmative action.

... Or have you never heard the term "redneck" or "white trash"?

Affirmative action was designed to produce paranoia, no question about it. UC v. Bakke would not have been written that way if paranoia had not been the goal.

But you don't have to worry about that kind of thing, since your kind control the terms of discourse.

>Steve, I totally disagree with you about using the economic argument. Affirmative action is discrimination against people by race, ethnicity, and gender by the government, or mandates on private industry to do the same. It's just plain wrong, whether it pays off "economically" somehow or not!<

Arguments against affirmative action that rely on white Americans’ sense of fair play have failed so utterly that most so-called conservatives no longer even attempt to make them. Knock yourselves out figuring out the reasons why. All I know is that we have got to figure out some other way to make the case, while there’s still time.

That’s where this depression comes in handy. Let's explain in bread-and-butter terms to suddenly fearful Middle Americans just what it will actually mean for them and their children to be in direct competition with tens of millions of Mexicans, and the arguments against affirmative action and Open Borders will go viral. Somehow I doubt that the PC elites will be able to come up with a vaccine in time.

Now is our big chance. Let Rahm Emmamuel find out just how right he was when he said that a serious crisis should never be allowed to go to waste. Let everybody find out.

If whites had more children, say a total fertility rate of 2.5 children per woman average (instead of 1.8) , there would be enough votes to keep immigrants out and enough children to keep the economy growing.

Lot's of countries have a low birth rate and still manage not to "suck in" immigration. You don't need a high birth rate to not have immigration, you merely need a country run by an "elite" which does not hate its own country. Japan is an instructive example.

There are no economic systems that grow GDP with a shrinking population.

Nonsense. All you need is productivity growing faster then the population shrinks. In any case the important metric is not GDP but GDP per capita. In which case even a static GDP coupled with a falling population suffices.

"This is an interesting issue. AA was much talked about by conservatives well into the 90's, but then disappeared from the political radar screen. It seems to me that it was the total takeover of the conservative media and foundations by the neocons that caused this. The people who cared about stuff like AA were purged from the movement and replaced by people like David Frum and Jonah Goldberg."

And the neocons happen to be a particular religon (or is it race) of people.

dear king obama: you couldn't be more correct that "once the gov't confers a benefit to some group, it is almost impossible to reverse that benefit down the road." look how difficult it has been to get white male propertyholders to give up sole possession of the franchise in US...

dear sideways: one would like some substantiation of your claim that AA hires are less competent than the "aternative employee." is this mere anecdote? have you a reasonably large sample or study?

the problem with affirmative action has nothing to do with quotas or competence. i defy anyone here to name an institution that has and meets racial quotas. what it boils down to is this: every institution has its myth: "everyone who is here deserves to be here. everyone who isn't here doesn't." in the era of legalized race and gender exclusion, no one can deny that perfectly qualified women and nonwhites were denied entry into institutions for which they were qualified. but, the trick has been (and this is where injustice thomas and ward connerly get it wrong) that when a group lets in a formerly excluded party, that person will *always* be under suspicion because of the institutional logic cited above. deserts themselves are defined in terms of *already having been* accepted and included. therefore, call it affirmative action/diversity/disneyworld/americana/whathaveyou... the suspicion of inferiority will always manifest until institutions acknowledge that their selection methods do not now and never have identified the most qualified applicants. as historian of science thomas kuhn might say, they have identified those who display competence in affirming the current paradigms of thought and action. therefore, any logical person who follows the same procedures but comes to a different conclusion (let's call them a copernicus) will automatically be dismissed, regardless of what others may (then or later) see as their achievement. and *this* question -- of the origins and durability of the presumption of outsiders' incompetence -- is far more worthy of our attention than the occasional unqualified outsider who slips in. first, i have seen these outsiders (esp. thomas) work primarily to maintain the current presumptions of competent/incompetent. let's not forget the justice received a harrowingly low mark from the American Bar Association. last, let us not forget the vast number of mediocre g w bushes and al gores who soaked up legacy spots at yale and other ivies. why is there no outrage about their lack of demonstrated achievement? how are the opponents of AA so certain that their spot (the one to which they feel entitled) was awarded to an incompetent negro or hispanic and not to one of those lazy whites woh coasted in on a legacy?

i defy anyone here to name an institution that has and meets racial quotas.

The United States government, for one. US colleges for two. Any other silly questions?

this is where injustice thomas and ward connerly get it wrong

Injustice Thomas!! Hah hah hah!! I bet you have 'em rolling in the aisle over at Daily Kos. Is there any particular reason why you self-important twits cannot use proper capitalization?

when a group lets in a formerly excluded party, that person will *always* be under suspicion because of the institutional logic cited above.

No, they are "under suspicion" because of the fact that they get into college with poorer grades and SAT scores. Sorry to have to trip you up with my white mans logic. If they were competing on a equal footing then Ward Connerly would not need to do what he does.

---last, let us not forget the vast number of mediocre g w bushes and al gores who soaked up legacy spots at yale and other ivies. why is there no outrage about their lack of demonstrated achievement?---

none of the above:I'd also like to see some good references for studies on the costs and direct implications of affirmative action programs...

Should blacks be admitted to medical schools with MCAT scores at the 15%th percentile (or whatever) of whites?)...

The actuarials in the insurance companies and the "outcomes management" folks in the hospitals know darned well who the good & the bad doctors are - and it wouldn't take them more than a line or two of SQL code to correlate that with race.

Now whether anyone in this day and age would dare write those lines of SQL code - and continue to be employed by his institution - is another matter entirely [heck, in some jurisdictions, it might be a crime to write those lines of SQL code].

"i defy anyone here to name an institution that has and meets racial quotas.

The United States government, for one. US colleges for two. Any other silly questions?

Well, blacks are far underrepresented per capita, in most US colleges, including Ivy league and sought-after public schools, so I don't know if that qualifies as a "quota".

As we can also see (according to your statistics) Mr. hardworking taxpayer, of every dollar you so willingly donated to the welfare system, "down on their luck" blacks and whites took roughly the same bite. That should make you happy, shouldn't it?

Brutus:This Truth character must have some incriminating photos of Steve-O to be able to post his ridiculous garbage when there's constant carping from some reasonable people here about posts being censored.

>As we can also see (according to your statistics) Mr. hardworking taxpayer, of every dollar you so willingly donated to the welfare system, "down on their luck" blacks and whites took roughly the same bite.<

Truthie, you obviously knew that there was a flaw in your reasoning big enough to drive a Cadillac through before you even hit "enter."

Since you have no interest in getting your arguments right, can't you at leat manage to be in some way entertaining?

How do you know Steve is approving the comments? Steve put up a post a while back where he showed that his son had a credit card. Maybe Steve has his son sort through his comments to pay for all of his trips to Burrito Barn.

"Lot's of countries have a low birth rate and still manage not to "suck in" immigration. You don't need a high birth rate to not have immigration, you merely need a country run by an "elite" which does not hate its own country. Japan is an instructive example."

Japan has a shrinking economy.

"All you need is productivity growing faster then the population shrinks. In any case the important metric is not GDP but GDP per capita. In which case even a static GDP coupled with a falling population suffices."

Sounds plausible in theory, but has never actually happened.

I agree that politicians/gov't should use per capita GDP instead of GDP as a preferred metric. Don't know if that will ever happen.

Many years ago, in grad school, I read the exact same thing in a textbook. Naturally they were lamenting that black men were helped the least. The author thought white women were less threatening and more educated(code for able) and therefore got the better jobs.

The real problem is that smart white women contribute too few children. It would be much easier to make the case that we are full and can't take more if in fact the native born population were growing even slightly. Also there would be more like minded people to vote to limit immigration. Instead all of the population growth in the US is from immigration. The birthrate for native born Americans is below replacement. The birth rate of immigrants is nearly double that of native born Americans. The nice gov't men include all children born in the US when calculating the birth rate so it totals up to just replacement rate.

If half of the under 18 population are NAM, clearly whites are at fault. Their suicidal family planning is to blame. AA didn't cause the drop in white births.

Not surprising, success often requires delayed gratification. Earn and enjoy now or train children to earn and enjoy later. Now that whites have eaten the cake, they no longer have it.

As we can also see (according to your statistics) Mr. hardworking taxpayer, of every dollar you so willingly donated to the welfare system, "down on their luck" blacks and whites took roughly the same bite. That should make you happy, shouldn't it?

I think we should replace Truth with Homie the Clown. We'd get better and more honest arguments that way.

Plus Homie is a television character so he presumably has no pride; it's sad to watch Truth debase himself so.

Japan's economy has grown only barely compared to "official" inflation rates, which are lower than the real inflation rate. So basically contraction.

Russia's economy shrank 40%, then started to "grow" back up to 1991 levels, so, I guess if you think that counts. Really their economy is so tied to commodities and the price of oil has gone up since 1991, so...

Any country just selling off its natural resources can "grow" until the resources run out.

Japan's economy has grown only barely compared to "official" inflation rates, which are lower than the real inflation rate. So basically contraction.

You don't say what time frame you are talking about, but over the long term (measured in decades) Japans GDP per capita growth has matched or exceeded that of the US. In the last year their export based economy has contracted slightly. Going forward they seem to be on far better ground than we are.

Russia's economy shrank 40%, then started to "grow" back up to 1991 levels

It is extremely difficult to compare numbers from the communist era to those afterwards. Among other problems, the communist era figures were whatever the Politburo felt they should be.

"You don't say what time frame you are talking about, but over the long term (measured in decades) Japans GDP per capita growth has matched or exceeded that of the US. In the last year their export based economy has contracted slightly. Going forward they seem to be on far better ground than we are."

Got any info on the per capita GDP for Japan? That seems plausible despite weak total GDP.Basically the past two decades are weak. They have a high ratio of exports to imports, always a plus, but vulnerable to external forces. They have virtually no immigration, so they aren't supporting a bunch of ne'er do wells. I think they have the oldest average age and also have low total fertility rate. Given those two negatives, they have done better than one would think humanly possible. However, those negatives are poised to catch up soon.

I wish them well. They have a beautiful refined culture and society, but they face major challenges due to their population structure.

I wish them well. They have a beautiful refined culture and society, but they face major challenges due to their population structure.

Population structure has no relationship to per capita GDP. None whatsoever. It would be odd, from a capitalist theory standpoint, if any such linkage existed. Capitalist theory links per capita GDP to productivity per person, not to raw quantity of people. If you have a contrary theory, lets hear it.

I have the GDP data you mentioned somewhere. I'll dig it up and post it later today.

I have to be a little skeptical of that assertion. If a huge percentage are old folks and there are few in the prime creative years, say 25-35, that doesn't look like a winner. Now that is my intuition. However, just looking at Japan, it would be interesting to try to correlate the size and proportion of people in that age group with significant gains in productivity and innovation.

"Scroll down to Table 6 to see GDP per capita numbers for various countries over various time frames."

I see the point that there was growth in per capita GDP. The document clearly states that it is calculated by the US gov't using data adjusted to 2005 dollars.However, the inflation rate calculation was adjusted down in the 1990's. Virtually all of the gains would be flat or negative using the old calculation. Now, well informed people might argue that the new method for estimating inflation is better or whatever. Fine, I simply make the point that newer figures are based on a different calculations than the pre 1990's numbers.

Another question to ponder. How much gain in per capita GDP is required to maintain the current standard of living when a growing share of the population is retired vs. working? Generally children are cheaper than retired folks in terms of housing, medical care, services.

The document clearly states that it is calculated by the US gov't using data adjusted to 2005 dollars.

However, the inflation rate calculation was adjusted down in the 1990's. Virtually all of the gains would be flat or negative using the old calculation.

Perhaps, thought you don't back that up with anything. But in any case, the point being made was the relative performace of Japan (and other countries with restrictive immigration policies) versus the United States.

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